City Hall computers down for about two hours today

City Hall computers went down from about 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. today because of a power issue that's still being looked at, said a spokeswoman for Mayor Rahm Emanuel today.

That meant workers couldn't use computers for much, with internal access to the Internet, including e-mail, gone for two hours.

The issues with the city’s internal system caused some problems for people trying to buy vehicle stickers, said Kristine Williams, spokeswoman for Clerk Susana Mendoza. City workers could not access the electronic payment system used to process sticker sales, Williams said.

After about a half an hour, the clerk’s office switched to a manual, backup system for processing sales, Williams said. But people who tried to make purchases online could not, she added.

The city website continued to operate, however. Hackers brought down the city and police web sites on May 20 during the NATO summit weekend. A source with knowledge of the continuing investigation into that web attack said there were no reports that today’s problems were related to that incident.

The Emanuel administration recently shuffled leadership in its information technology department. Emanuel spokeswoman Sarah Hamilton said the personnel change didn't have to do with the hacking attack, but a top manager earning his MBA and deciding to move on.